The Killing Type (14 page)

The cue ball pops out onto the floor
at my feet and I am snapped back into what passes for reality
now.

“Ooops,” the raver says.

I pick up the ball and peruse it for a
minute, and then just toss it to him lightly. He fumbles the
reception and the ball clacks to the floor again and rolls right
back to me. I pick it up and he looks at me in a certain way, so I
just hold it out to him this time and he walks over slowly to
retrieve it.

“Safer this way,” he says to the ball,
avoiding my eyes altogether.

I sit back in my chair and
my hand gravitates toward a glass of something that I don’t even
remember ordering. I sip: it’s sour and the colour of dirty water.
It invigorates me somewhat though, like a shot of adrenaline, and I
set it down and turn back to watch the game. Like a baby, I wish
that life could reduce itself to quarters or periods or halves, or
to whatever other convenient slice with an unequivocal result. I am
tired of this mystery tonight, tired of the growing list of dead
people and with the time not conveniently running out, tired of
this not being a game from which someone rescues me from the floor
after the last second has clicked off and it’s all zeroes and
somebody,
somebody
has won. I just want it to be over, that’s all.

Chapter 15

I pull myself together the
following night: I consider the obvious and start wondering whether
Tony could possibly be a murderer with a penchant for self-assured
emails flaunting her eventual elusion of capture. Like any other
revolutionary speculation in research, the idea seems both crazy
and self-evident at the same time. I do not completely share the
mob’s disillusionment with the police, but now I do sense a little
resentment building in me at the prospect that I, a mere
ex-researcher, a writer of books, a harmless drudge, should be the
one who is trying to tease out tidbits and be the only person who
is effectively investigating this case. No, I did not find Tony by
using techniques of inspired Holmesian (or even Millhonian)
deduction, but I am a firm believer in the power and the meaning of
serendipity. I did not just
happen
to be at the library reading books on the same
topic as she was: I was, as some bronzed bimbo said on TV this
evening, “in the zone,” and primed like a medium for the
interception of clues and hints and people who are likely to be
involved in this serial mess.

I learned from carrying out literary
research that things are not always as they appear. In fact, a
certain wariness serves well as a guiding first principle so as to
prevent one from making assumptions where they should not be made.
My own dismissal from TU, for example, was an egregious example of
specious reasoning being used to arrive at what would be an
untenable decision in more rational circumstances, involving people
who were less animated by open-mindedness than by a tendency toward
hasty conclusion. But I have talked enough about that here. In the
case of Tony, the simplistic analysis yields a seemingly obvious
conclusion on either side: she revels in talk of murder and so
seems a likely candidate for some experimentation with same, and
she’s a gregarious girl with a quirky sense of humour whom it is
hard to imagine cutting up one victim or throwing another one off a
building. However, the case studies are filled with examples of
serial killers bragging about their conquests, and those like Ted
Bundy who were the epitome of charm.

Objectivity is a bitch of a
god in any kind of analysis or research. You strive to please her,
you do everything you can to ensure that her strictures and
requirements are met, and you still end up with a shabby
approximation of the knowledge you were trying to discover. You
call them
facts
,
but deep down you know they are not, and you are slightly ashamed
of your duplicity and complicity in this doomed effort.

My general process for writing this
damn book has also been a horrendous experience in other regards.
First, the mechanics of my composition. From conversations and
correspondences which I have had with writers along the whole range
of expertise—everyone from well-published academics and
professional journalists, to amateurs who slog away at occasional
freelance pieces which disgrace one print publication or another,
even to people whose oeuvre consists of nothing but letters to mom
and short stories tucked away (thankfully) in a drawer while they
tend to children and the other practicalities of the non-artistic
life—by far most of those writers tell me that they write by first
gushing out sentences and then relying on the editing stage to hone
the words into something beautiful or informative. My own method is
quite different: I do not commit a sentence to paper or to the
screen until I am satisfied with its overall heft, with both the
what and the how, the content and the style. In the case of my book
on the serial killings, this method has proven to be a considerable
mental strain. Instead of cathartically relieving myself of the
burden of a particularly brutal fact, for example, I have to stew
over all of its atrocious details in my attempt to render the
information accurately and articulately.

I read somewhere once that
Anthony Burgess was surprised at how difficult he’d found the
writing of his novel
A Clockwork
Orange
. He had thought and hoped that a
writer would be able to write about anything, that extreme violence
should be as easy to master—I am forgetting his exact comparison
now, and so admit to speculation—as, let’s say, the most banal of
domestic dramas. My own background research has also been trying. I
have felt that it is necessary to provide the reader with context.
Therefore I have sought out and read intently a wide range of
murder books. Case studies in which the most horrific crimes are
dispassionately presented in all their inhuman detail. Junk “true
crime” paperbacks cranked out by self-important hacks interested
more in money and titillation than in anything else. Articles in
academic journals. Police reports. Newspaper features on killers
from Humbert to Homolka.

I turn on my computer and while it
boots itself up I get out of my clothes as if I am shedding
something dead, a skin. While I am throwing them into the bottom of
the closet with the rest of the soiled laundry from a tough week, I
hear the computer make its musical sound, as if it is delighted to
be revived again. I put on loose shorts and a long T-shirt and sit
down at the flat screen.

I have another email:

Oh, dear Jesus, but you are a sight
for a killing type such as myself. I feel somewhat like the ghost
of Hamlet’s father, coming back not to inspire you to action but to
remind you of your haplessness and futility. Give up, lay the book
aside, stop this incessant analysis (or semblance of same), and
return to whatever hole you came out of and leave me be to finish
my job. I’ve killed and I will kill again, and your meddling will
be something I merely crush as I proceed undeterred.

There is no deliberation this time: I
call the police. An Officer Carp tells me to forward the email to
him but also to save it on my own computer.

“I’d also like to ask you a few
questions, if you don’t mind?”

“Of course.”

His throat is cleared, some papers are
shuffled. “Do you know of anyone who would be sending you this kind
of message, perhaps not even seriously, just as a joke
perhaps?”

“No, of course not.”

“Why do you say
of course not
?”

“Well, just that it’s not much of a
joke, is it? I mean, it’s not funny, actually a little scary, for
me anyway.”

“Yes, I can understand that. OK,
another question: Have you ever had an email like this before? Is
this the first one?”

“No, this is the first one,” I lie,
boldly and baldly, seeing no point in divulging my negligence, my
suppression of evidence, I suppose. I do a quick calculation in my
head and the result is that it’s unlikely that this lie will ever
come back to hurt me: either the killer will be caught, making the
point moot, or he will not be, and the police will be busy with
more important things than a couple of prequel emails.

“OK,” he says, sounding more or less
convinced. “Listen, I am going to have to let you go now, but we’ll
be reading through this email and we’ll likely be calling you
again, perhaps even to come down to answer a few more questions—all
part of the routine—a few more questions, or maybe an officer can
come to your house.”

I am not sure whether he is asking or
telling.

“Sure,” I say, and he hangs up
abruptly.

I click off my own phone but it rings
immediately again.

“Yes?” I say, expecting a forgotten
followup question from Carp. But there is only silence. I utter an
embarrassing series of “Who’s there?” and “Hello?,” like a frantic
woman in some cheap horror movie, but there is no satisfaction
provided by the other end. I hear literally nothing, not even
breathing. After about a minute, the connection goes dead and I
click off my own phone and set it back down on an end
table.

Later that evening, as we had arranged
via much more prosaic emails, I meet Rachel the librarian at her
apartment. In a demonstration of trust and helpfulness that
literally brings a tear to my eye—a man she hardly knows being
invited into her home—she has agreed to review some of my research
and to suggest avenues for future investigation. I turn off the
sidewalk, go up to the purple door, and knock. Feet make a sound on
what sounds like hardwood, and the radio, playing a classical
movement that I can’t quite place—Sibelius perhaps?—is promptly
turned down. She lives on the first floor of a small brick house on
Pembroke Street, less than a ten-minute walk from my own
place.

“Hi, Andrew,” she says even before the
door is fully open. “It’s so good to see you,” and the door is
closed quietly but efficiently behind me. She leads me into a
living room of elegant though somewhat cramped comfort and invites
me to sit down on what is either a small couch or a large loveseat.
I choose the left side, inattentively worried that she might have
to squeeze in beside me, but once I am settled I see that there is
an armchair at about a forty-five-degree angle to the right
arm.

“I was just about to get myself some
tea,” she says. “Would you like some, or I could get you coffee or
something else? No alcohol in the place.” She laughs.

“Tea sounds great.”

While she is in the kitchen
I remove some of my handwritten notes and a pen from my portfolio.
A shiver of hopelessness goes through me as I wonder what I am
doing here and what I could glean from
anyone
about this impossible case, but
I right myself at about exactly the time that Rachel comes with our
tea.

“It’s Earl Grey,” she says. “I hope
that’s OK?”

“Wonderful. For me tea is like a fine
wine that I only have occasionally. I have to admit that I drink a
kind of swill of coffee most days, and treat myself to latte now
and then, but tea is a real, well, treat.”

She performs the delicate movements
required to position the cups on our respective end tables, and
while she is touching the top of the lid and pouring mine, I take
the opportunity to observe her in all her integrity. The
concentration might be the same as she devotes to a game of chess
with a colleague, or to a particularly tricky question from a
patron at the library. I am embarrassed when pourer’s eyes meet
starer’s, but she simply smiles, sets the teapot down on a doily,
and settles into her chair as if she is waiting for me to ask the
first interview question.

“It feels odd,” she says finally and I
sigh internally. “It feels odd to have the luxury of sitting here
while—you know, while there’s someone out there killing people and
while there are family and friends out there whose lives have been
ruined by all of this. I feel guilty sometimes.” Her cup clacks
onto the saucer more loudly than she evidently meant it to, and she
seems to be somewhat startled. There’s a ripple in her composure
but she recovers quickly.

“That’s a common reaction,” I say,
relieved to know something. “In the research I’ve done, it’s clear
that there is a whole variety of emotions and reactions that serial
murder causes, some quite surprising. In one town, I don’t remember
where just now, but the citizens started vandalizing the city. It
wasn’t that they were angry with the police or anything like that,
just the tendency toward crime spreading like some sort of virus.
Or at least that’s one of the theories.”

“Wow, that’s fascinating. I guess I
have more pedestrian theories myself. Or speculations or whatever
you want to call them. One thing is that I’m not sure why people
don’t just hole up in their apartments, in their houses, and just
never come out until the man is caught. I’m kind of amazed at
myself that I don’t do that actually. I’ll be walking down the
street after an evening shift at work, like when it’s just starting
to get dark, and it only suddenly occurs to me then that—well, you
know. I kind of rush home then.”

I set my cup down with the intention
of reassuring the poor woman. “Listen,” I say a little too
imperatively, “I firmly believe that in spite of the obvious, we’re
all fairly safe in town. Not to sound too crude and mathematical
about it, but it’s highly unlikely that little you or little anyone
is going to be, so to speak, selected.”